Sunday, December 02, 2012

Kringle Blog
I love to cook and bake, to read about food, and to write about it. I’m always interested in how other authors use food in their books, and often discover delicacies I want to try. That was the case with “Kringle, the single greatest pastry the world has ever created,” which I discovered through Mark Zubro’s Another Dead Republican.

Since Christmas is approaching, I was thinking about Kringle again. The first time I heard about Kringle, it was being eaten by Tom and Scott, Zubro’s heroes. “Scott handed out napkins and small slices of Kringle to Enid and me and took one for himself. It was pecan, the best kind. I swallowed it in two bites. Mom had remembered to pick up the Kringle from Racine. Count on mom to get the best pastry ever invented at a time like this.”

I was intrigued, but when I read, “As we talked I offered more Kringle around. Enid declined. Scott and I took more. You had to scarf down Kringle when you got the chance. You never knew when you might be facing your last chance at Kringle,” I thought this was a pastry I had to find out more about.

Fortunately, Cook’s Country just came out with a simplified recipe for Kringle, which in its complicated form required three days of preparation, including folding the dough over and over again. I’ve done that when making pain au chocolate, chocolate croissants, and it’s very tedious.

I admit that several of my problems with this recipe came from not following the instructions. I started out using the blender instead of the food processor. Not a disaster, but it did make something else to clean up. Then I dumped all the ingredients for the dough into the processor—not realizing I was supposed to wait to add the sour cream until after the dough had become pebbly. Oops. And I put the egg I was supposed to use for a wash over the dough into the dough. Second oops.

The Kringle turned out pretty well, though. It’s not as flaky as it could have been, but it tastes good. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to get Kringle into one of my own books!